Houston, we've had a problem here

Hello, my name is Tracey and I have a problem. I am a knit-a-holic. I have enjoyed a love affair with yarn and knitting since I first picked up needles and yarn. In my teens and early 20’s, economic factors kept my stash building to a minimum – although during my college years, Webs (when they were in Amherst) did get a fair share of my hard earned spending money. Once adulthood set in and steady employment found its way into my life, I started building quite a stash and I still have things in my stash that are almost 20 years old!

When I moved to North Carolina, my knitting went on the back-burner. A new baby and a lack of knitting stores were mostly to blame, but then a few years ago, my son was starting to play baseball and I needed an activity to keep from going stir-crazy while sitting through games and practices. At that time, I discovered the world of knitting blogs. I was excited. I got to read about something I loved and I thought, this will be an inexpensive hobby. I have all this stash and I thought I could find new patterns to breathe new life into all the old yarn I had. Well, that lasted like – not at all! New yarn stores opened up locally. I found on-line retailers. I saw all these projects on line that I wanted to make and of course all the books and magazines. I hate to admit it, but at this point I have enough stash to probably last several years!

There are a couple of things going on when it comes to my compulsion to buy new yarn. The first thing is that I love being creative and knitting has been one of my most proficient expressions of my desire to be creative. Second, there are some parts of my life that are not quite what I would like them to be and when I am bored, sad, lonely, etc., my fingers start clicking on the old mouse and next thing I know I have bought more yarn. Now this wouldn’t be all that bad except that I have a bad habit of starting things and not finishing them for various reasons. So, the bottom line is that I have tons of Stash and WIP.

As the economy gets slower and my bills have gotten bigger, it has become clear that I have to do something to change my ways. Of course, I placed orders with Knit Picks, Blue Moon Fibers, Handpainted Yarn.com and Jimmy Beans like a junkie trying to score one last fix! So here is the plan or more aptly stated, my commitment. For the next year (oh, did I really just say that?!?!), I pledge to work through as much WIP and Stash as possible and I promise I won’t buy anything new.